


The Importance of Human Culture

by DyedViolet



Category: Dr. STONE (Anime), Dr. STONE (Manga)
Genre: Gen, Humor, I directly quoted wikipedia for some of this, contains Real Science, crackfic, crackfic that takes a weird detour into sentimentality, the manganese battery song, this is way longer than i even intended it to be
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-25
Updated: 2020-05-25
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:54:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24376102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DyedViolet/pseuds/DyedViolet
Summary: The anime decided to use the word meme in the subs, so this was born.
Comments: 9
Kudos: 84





	The Importance of Human Culture

"As if! You guys are just making me go along with some weird meme! Who cares about the flavor harmony of cotton candy?!"

"You guys know the word meme? Did it show up in the 100 tales?" Gen ponders.

"Dammit, old man," Senku mutters. Then Gen is hit by an idea.

"Wait, do you guys know yeet?"

"What is 'yeet?'" Kohaku asks.

"Y'know, uh," Gen says, waving his hands to elaborate on a point he hasn't made yet. His eyes land on the half-eaten cotton candy, and he picks the stick up.

"This bitch empty, yeet!" he says, throwing the stick as hard as he can. It lands a pitiful few feet away. Kohaku blinks as she processes this new information.

"Ginro, come here," she says.

"Sure, why?" he asks, naively wandering towards her. Without warning, she scoops him up, securing her grip on his thigh and forearm.

"This bitch is empty!" she shouts as she aims for the forest's underbrush. Senku doubles over laughing.

"Wait, no! What are you doing!? Stop! Don't!" Ginro pleads.

"Do it," Kinro says blandly. Kohaku widens her stance, planting her feet solidly in the earth.

"YEET!"

* * *

"Say, Gen, do you know of any other memes you could teach us?" Ginro asks, saddling up beside him at dinner. Kohaku had thrown him into a particularly dense patch of underbrush, so there was no major damage, but that didn't prevent him from being covered in abundant shallow scratches. Kinro watches his brother's antics with a scowl over the rims of his glasses.

"Well, it depends. What kind of memes are you interested in learning?"

"Something to get revenge on Kohaku," he says without batting an eyelash. Kinro sighs, pushing his glasses back up as he pinches the bridge of his nose.

"Sorry pal, we don't have the technology to rickroll people yet."

"I don't even know what that means!" Ginro whines.

"You're like a baby," Kinro chides him. Gen has his second idea of the day.

"Aw, does the widdle baby need hewp figuwing out how to conqwuew Kohaku with a fwawwwess pwan of wevenge?"

"What are you doing with your mouth," Ginro asks. Kirno's glasses slide back down his nose.

"It's called OwO speech. As you can see, it is an  _ excellent  _ tool to annoy people. There are a few essential phrases you will need if you want to defeat Kohaku. Ready?" Ginro nods.

"Doctow, qwick, we'we woosing him! Get the defibwuwatow!"

"...the defibwuwatow!" Ginro echoes. Kinro is trying to hide it with his hand as he pushes his glasses up again, but he is also mouthing the words.

"Good!" Gen prepares to put on two different voices. "Pwease mistew pwesident, I'ww do anything!"

"... anything!" The brothers echo. Gen smirks and does his best rendition of a bass-boosted voice.

" **Then Perish.** " The brothers are utterly confused, and Gen nearly spills his dinner with his wild cackling.

* * *

As everyone gets to work on making a literal mountain of golden wire, Kohaku takes to using yeet as a managerial tool. Whenever it’s time to switch out whoever’s manning the wire maker, or when someone’s specific skillset would help with preparing for winter, she will sneak up behind her target and announce, “Yeet,” giving the unlucky soul just over a second before being hurled into the underbrush. (Senku calculated it.) The only person immune to this treatment, instead being gently tossed in the air and caught in Kohaku’s sure arms, is Suika.

“How come you don’t yeet Suika?” Chrome asks after returning from the underbrush. 

“Yeah, she’s the only one with a helmet on!” Gen chimes in, still trying to get the brambles out of his hair.

“Suika is a child,” Kohaku says, unimpressed that the other two failed to come to that conclusion.

“There are other children here!” Chrome points out.

“I don’t yeet the other children, either.”

“But you still throw Suika?”

“She’s one of the first members of the Kingdom of Science, she gets special treatment.” As if to prove her point, Kohaku picks Suika up with a calm announcement of “Yeet,” and tosses her barely two feet in the air.

“C’mon, that’s not fair, why’re you giving the melon child special treatment?” Gen complains. Suika looks at him, then up at Kohaku from where she had caught her, then back at Gen. Then back at Kohaku. She slaps her face.

“You’ve been meloned,” Suika says in a deadpan before dropping out of Kohaku’s arms and rolling away. Kohaku stands stunned for several seconds, a look of betrayal slowly blooming on her face.

“You get back here, Suika, I’ll show you what a real yeet is!”

The Kingdom of Scinece was, understandably, a bit derailed that day, as two separate campaigns of chaos raged against each other. The chief obviously did his best to quell it and make up for lost time, but understandably, no one had the power to bring these trends to a full halt.

* * *

With the new tools of science comes much work, but it also provides wonderful gifts like the ability to preserve meat for the winter. Because of it and other similar blessings, the winter preparation team finds themselves fully prepared before the science team has work prepared for them. Because of this, the science team goes into overdrive with the delicate work required to create tasks for the more muscly people of the village. Senku especially, as he almost enters a trance of unbroken workflow.

Thus arrises a new game for the people with the day off.

“How many seconds have passed since you’ve woken up?” Kohaku asks.

“Twenty seven thousand two hundred and thirty three,” he rattles off without so much as a shudder to the stream of chemical pouring from his beaker.

“Did you give me those leaves knowing they’d give me the runs?” Ginro asks.

“A 1999 review found that coffee does not cause indigestion, but may promote gastrointestinal reflux. Two reviews of clinical studies on people recovering from abdominal, colorectal, and gynecological surgery found that coffee consumption was safe and effective for enhancing postoperative gastrointestinal function.” 

“That doesn’t answer the question!” Ginro complains. Senku does not respond. “What even are half of those words!? Gastro-intersection? And what’s coffee?”

“Coffee is a brewed drink prepared from roasted coffee beans, the seeds of berries from certain _Coffea_ species. The genus _Coffea_ is native to tropical Africa (specifically having its origin in Ethiopia and Sudan) and Madagascar, the Comoros, Mauritius, and Réunion in the Indian Ocean.” 

“You’ve been meloned,” Suika says, slapping Senku’s leg. He ignores it, moving further into the lab to root around for whatever ingredient he needs.

“That still doesn’t explain how coffee is connected to the leaves you gathered,” Kinro points out. “Didn’t you say those were tea leaves?”

“Caffeine is a central nervous system (CNS) stimulant of the methylxanthine class. It’s found most commonly in tea and coffee, is poisonous to most animals, and,” Senku explains with a smirk as he pulls out a large basket full of tea leaves, “it can be extracted in its pure form using dichloromethane, which just so happens to be found naturally at volcanoes.”

“You fed me  _ poison _ ?” Ginro accuses. Senku ignores him as he begins shoving leaves down the narrow neck of a large beaker.

“The conversation was relevant to what you were doing the whole time?” Kohaku asks. Senku nods as he fills the beaker to his satisfaction. He pours in the chemical he was working with earlier, something vaguely sweet wafting up as it hits the glass and leaves. Then, he covers the beaker and heads to the door of the lab as he swirls his concoction around.

“Hey Chrome! Get the lightbulb setup ready, I’m gonna need it for vacuum filtration in about ten minutes!” The call, instead of getting Chrome to do as asked, summons him to the lab. Gen is also summoned, for whatever reason.

“What’re you using it for?” Chrome asks.

“He fed me  _ poison  _ that gave me the runs!” Ginro exclaims. Gen blinks at him.

“Oh, do you mean caffeine? Yeah, it’s poisonous, but mostly to other animals. The lethal dose for humans is pretty much inconsumable.”

“Not when I’m done with it,” Senku says, losing awareness of the room around him as he focuses on swirling his beaker.

“...Do you mean to tell me that not only are you working on a personal project,” Kohaku says cooly, “but one that has the potential to kill people?”

“Well, it’s not like I’d be careless enough to make each individual dose that high, but–” His explanation is cut off with a yelp as Kohaku lifts him into the air. He manages to fumble the beaker safely into Chrome’s hands as she carries him outside. Kohaku does not aim for the underbrush this time–there’s snow now. That ought to be enough.

“YEET!”

* * *

Kaseki focuses intently on forming the parts of the Hickman pump, muscles bulging. Senku watches him with a furrowed brow and a hand on his chin.

“What’re you thinking, Chief?” Chrome asks offhandedly.

“I can’t figure out how he does it,” Senku says, gesturing to Kaseki’s tense back. “It could be sudden, minor dehydration due to the increased body temperature of an excited nervous system. It could be that he flexes when he gets inspired. Maybe it’s just the placebo effect, though, and he just believes that he gets swole so hard that he actually gets swole.”

“Wait, what’s the placebo effect?” Chrome asks. Apparently, there are enough context clues for him to figure out what swole means.

“The placebo effect is essentially when a person’s beliefs are enough to cause the anticipated effects,” Senku explains. “People who should’ve lived have died from it, and people who should’ve died have survived because of it. It’s so prevelant that new medicines had to go through a double-blind trial to make sure they were more effective than people’s brains just deciding to be better. This might be one of the few areas where Gen knows more than I do, though,” Senku sighs. “I wish neuroscience had gotten a little further along before all this happened.”

“You called~?” Gen coos, suddenly appearing between the two. Chrome jolts at his sudden arrival. “Kidding, kidding, I just happened to be walking by. The placebo effect, though?”

“What do you know about it?” Chrome asks excitedly, eager for new knowledge.

“Sorry, buddy. I read a whole book on it, and the only conclusion I can come up with is that it’s the closest thing to real magic that we’ve proved exists.”

“That’s debatable,” Senku butts in.

“Hey Kaseki!” Chrome calls, ignoring Senku. “Magic is still a little bit real! If you believe hard enough your belief becomes true!”

“That’s not how–!” Senku snaps, but he is cut off by Kaseki bellowing, “Hickman shall not defeat me!” The glass forms steadily in his hands, and his deltoids flex even harder. 

“...I wonder what else would make Kaseki swole,” Senku wonders absently.

“He only gets swole for himself, I think,” Gen adds.

“A true master of the placebo magic,” Chrome says reverently.

* * *

“Training time, you layabout!”

“Quit it, you lion!” Ginro whines as Kohaku lightly whacks him with a training spear.

“I’m no lion, and I’ll quit it when you actually get off your ass!”

“What, you’d rather be called a gorilla?!”

“Huh. That’d be a weird fursona,” Gen comments as he passes by the usual shenanigans.

“What’s a fursona?” Kinro asks, also avoiding training, but managing to do it much better by pretending to be doing something.

“It’s, uh… Sometimes, people drew themselves as animals.”

“Interesting.” Kinro walks away from Gen, in what he thinks is the direction of the village’s limited writing supplies. He’ll let Ginro deal with Kohaku’s reaction on his own. 

* * *

When Ruri starts helping with the batteries, the work undoubtedly goes by faster, but it still leaves them with four hundred each to make. Gen figures that they should be done in… Eventually. He’s not the one constantly counting seconds. Think of the scientist, though, and he shall appear after fifty batteries each.

“How’re things going in here? I know I told Gen to do it on his own, but if you need more help I can get some of the wire team in here.”

“No, we’ll be alright,” Ruri turns him down. “I know there’s still much wire to make, and between Gen and I, we should be able to finish by this evening!”

“Speak for yourself, Ruri,” Gen complains. “I mean, yeah, we’ll probably finish today, but it’s  _ hard work  _ and we’re gonna get  _ tired _ . It’s times like these that I wish there was still coffee~.” He bats his eyelashes, laying it on extra thick just for his own amusement. Senku rolls his eyes at him.

“If you want caffeine you could just ask,” he says drily. Then, without warning, he bends down and pulls up a concealed panel from the floor.

“You hid the caffeine?” Gen asks in disbelief. Ruri blinks in shock as Senku pulls out a sealed clay jar.

“I had to. Ginro will either try to throw it all out or ingest way too much at once. It’s safe as long as it’s spread out.” He unseals the jar, the scent of honey flooding the hut, and reaches into the floor cubby to take a single pinch of white powder–the distilled caffeine. He sprinkles it into the jar, then stirrs it with a stick from the cubby. Finally, he reaches in and pulls out two clay mugs, setting them side by side in front of the jar.

“This should be equivalent to roughly five cups of coffee,” he tells them. Then, stretching his back with a pop, he turns to leave, waving lazily over his shoulder. “Work hard, you two!”

“Is–Is this safe to drink?” Ruri asks hesitently.

“Yes! It should be, at least,” Gen tells her, pouring himself a mug. He takes a swig, and the closest thing he can compare it to is a sugary energy drink. Not that sugary, though, because it’s just watery honey, but at least he feels a bit reenergized–or, he thinks with a smirk, he just placebo’d himself.

“If you say so,” Ruri concedes, also pouring herself a mug.

“Pace yourself,” Gen cautions her. “Back in the modern world, I could handle about three coffees before going a little–Well, like the inverse of getting drunk, but not really? And you’ve never had caffeine before, so you don’t have any tolerance built up.”

“Please Gen, I might be recovering, but I’m not weak.” Ruri proceeds to slam half the mug in one long gulp. Gen surpresses a smirk and returns to painting the battery rings. Things are about to get interesting.

At almost three hundred batteries total, nothing particularly interesting has happened yet. Ruri finished her–energy drink, let’s call it–fairly quickly, but she’s wise enough not to immediately go for a second. Gen is in a similar position, still nursing the start of his second mug. With nothing better to do with his hands on autopilot, he thinks of a random topic of conversation and spits it out.

“It’s weird how half of the village is named after minerals, isn’t it? And in English, too.”

“Is that what they are? I’ve always wondered why they sound different than our language.”

“How long ago did they start, anyways? Someone pretty early on must’ve started it.”

“It’s common for names to be reused about every forth generation,” Kohaku explains. “It’s a way to remember great-grandparents and lost friends, without having two people of the same name in the village.”

“You intentionally avoid repeating names?” Gen asks. “You wouldn’t believe the modern world; at one point, I was working with five different Akiras and had to tell them apart by their hair styles!” Ruri snorts in disbelief.

“Really?”

“Oh, yes! There was Spikey, Twin Tail, Bedhead, Bobbed, and Pony.”

“Pony? What’s that hairstyle named after?”

“A ponytail, like Kohaku wears! You guys have probably never seen a horse. They’re like deer, but bigger, with kind of bulging eyes, and they were used for manual labor and transportation a lot before cars were invented.” Then Ruri asks what cars were like, and the conversation continues in that vein well through battery #800. 

* * *

“Oh! I just had an idea,” Gen says unprompted. “A Bad Science idea.”

“What do you mean ‘bad science’? Science has done nothing but help us!” Kohaku says.

“It’s a bad idea that requires science; ergo, Bad Science,” Gen explains. “Anyways: What if we crossbred tomatoes with nightshade?”

“What’s a tomato?” Chrome asks. “And why would you want to cross it with nightshade? Does the tomato have properties that would eliminate the poison and make it edible?”

“Oh, right~. We don’t have tomatoes yet. And not exactly, Chrome. The goal of this is more like, uh…” Gen brings a hand to his face, dramatisizing his expression as he thinks. “Figuring out how to eat what could kill us?”

“Just… for the challenge of it?” Chrome questions, brow scrunching up.

“Yeah, forbidden snack,” Gen chirps.

“What is with you people and eating poison?” Ginro shouts from the bridge, just close enough to eavesdrop on their conversation.

“I think some people are more sensitive to nightshades anyways,” Gen bowls over Ginro’s complaint. “Depending on the species of flower, some people might even be immune?”

“...We  _ have  _ to try this!” Chrome cheers, his eyes lighting up.

“We are absolutely not doing this,” Senku counters, finally joining the conversation. “The risks involved far outweigh any potential benefit of a negligible new food source.”

“But what about tomatoes?!” Chrome yells. “If Gen was suggesting crossing them with nightshade, then they must be related, right? Can we make tomatoes from nightshade?”

“That’s not how evolution works.”

“Yeah! Tell ‘em, Senku!” Ginro chimes in. The arguement wears on, and Gen slips away in the uproar. Kinro watches him leave the group and raises an eyebrow, either questioning or judging. Gen lifts a playful finger and shushes him. 

He circles around to the back of the lab, but there are no obvious storage containers around. Figures. He doesn’t bother checking the inside of the lab–the others are all too comfortable poking around in there, despite all the face-melting chemicals on the shelves. If Senku has a private stash of anything, it would be somewhere more private.

Gen makes his way to the observatory, and with his eye for detail, he spots the sliced section of the floor the second his eyes cross the threshold. He crawls up and moves the small square of wood aside, peering into the homemade cubby.

“Oh- _ ho _ , Senku, I knew you were a Monster fiend way back when, but I didn’t think you’d go this far.”

In the cubby are numerous tiny clay mugs, sealed shut and smelling faintly of honey. In the far corner is a large portion of the purified caffeine they made the other day. The mugs likely already have a carefully measured amount of caffeine in each of them, calculated for maximum impact without harm. Gen chuckles to himself as he covers the cubby, shifting the panel back in line with the rest of the floor. He drifts down the observatory ladder and returns to the tomato debate like he never left.

“If I remember correctly, potatoes and eggplants are in the same family, too.”

“More forbidden vegetables!?” Chrome asks excitedly. Senku smacks his forehead and glares at Gen. He is met only with a cheeky, knowing grin.

“Who put up this sign?” Senku asks one morning, holding a hide that reads, “Days since Senku has pulled an all-nighter: 0.”

“I’m not mad, I just want to know who did it.”

“Senku, did you not get any sleep last night?” Kinro asks with concern. “This is unacceptable. Go take a nap before today’s work picks up.”

“I don’t need a nap!”

“You’we a widdle gwupmy, though,” Gen teases him.

“Does baby need a nappy-wappy in his cwadwe?” Kohaku joins in.

“I said I don’t need a nap! Of course I’m going to be annoyed if you guys keep insinuating that I can’t take care of–”

“Go to youw woom, young man, and west untiw you feew bettew,” Ruri says. Ginro’s head falls into his breakfast bowl as he tries and fails to stifle his laughter. 

“I am technically older than all of you,” Senku defends with a glare.

“Except me, of course,” Gen reminds him. 

“I didn’t pull an all-nighter anyways, so this whole argument is moot,” he grumbles, rushing through the rest of his breakfast and storming off to the lab for the day’s work.

Everyone else at the table shares a look, knowing that Gen made that sign after checking Senku’s caffeine stash.

* * *

“Hm. We might have to get more sulfuric acid soon, if we want to keep up with battery production,” Senku observes.

“Please don’t send me again, I can’t look at the pool without remembering the demon-woman I saw there that one time,” Ginro complains.

“ _ Oh _ , so that’s what you were seeing when you tried to walk straight into it,” Chrome recalls.

“I was wondering what you hallucinated, too, I just never got around to asking,” Senku chimes in.

“Figures that it only takes a pretty face to get you to walk to your doom,” Kohaku jabs at him.

“She was only pretty half the time!” Ginro weakly defends himself.

“What did she look like, then?” Ruri asks.

“Well, at first, it looked like she had hair and eyes kind of the same color as the pool, and some sort of white dress,” Ginro explains. “And wings! White wings like the dress. And she had kind of a magic glow. But then her face kind of fell off? And just, chunks of her body started melting, and the melty parts and her wings turned grey, and then she shrieked like–like–” Ginro throws his hands in the air, giving up on explaining and letting their imaginations fill in the blanks.

“... I’ll admit, she does sound kind of pretty,” Kohaku says.

“The first part, at least,” Chrome adds.

“... Yeah. The first part.” 

“Anyways, we don’t have to go today. Just something to keep in mind,” Senku says, turning back to his work. And that was the end of that conversation.

Until.

A few hours later, Senku reemerges from the lab to see the entire village cirlced around a wooden pole, with a hide bearing a drawing of Ginro’s hallucination hanging from it.

“We are gathered here today to send the brave Chrome and Kinro off on their journey to collect sulfuric acid,” Ginro says to the crowd, standing next to the poster. Kinro and Chrome stand to its other side, gas masks and empty bottles strapped to their backs. 

“Before they go, we will all ask the fairy of the acid pool to be merciful today, and not to take their lives.”

“Spare them, fairy!” and “You boys will be alright!” and “Fair lady of the pool!” and “I could take her,” all come from the crowd. Ginro lets them speak for a long moment, before raising his hands to signal for silence.

“With the well-wishes of your people, and with the mercy of the fairy, we send you on your way!” The crowd cheers, and Chrome gives a melodramatic salute before marching towards the mountain, Kinro on his heels.

“... Did he seriously make a cult just to get out of a job?" Senku asks himself.

“Well~,” Gen chimes in, popping up at Senku’s shoulder, “depending on how Ginro leads this little group he’s organized, it might not classify as a cult. It’s more of a loose religion at this point.” Senku glances sideways at him, and he gives a sharp grin.

“Though, by definition, that makes the Sulfuric Acid Fairy a meme~.”

“I’m going back to the lab.”

* * *

When Gen checks on Senku’s private caffeine stash, it usually takes a while to notice the single missing mug out of the whole supply. Not tonight. Tonight, when he checks on the energy drink shots, there are five mugs missing.

“Senku, what are you doing?” he chuckles into the empty observatory. Then, knowing his mission, he climbs down and works his way around the village, waking up the usual group one by one. He saves Ginro for last, knowing that we will be loud.

“Why’re you waking me up in the middle of–All of us up in the middle of the night!”

“Shh!” Gen hisses at him. “And I’m about to explain, now that we have everyone.”

“Please do,” Kohaku says, also obviously annoyed at being awake.

“I’ll keep it brief: Senku just took five of his energy drinks into the lab with him, which is a ridiculous amount of caffiene. Come one, come all, watch our Chief cease to be fully rational! One night only!” Gen says with a flourish.

“Wouldn’t he notice?” Chrome asks.

“We can use the observatory telescope and spy on him through the window,” Gen explains.

"Humility is a virtue. It is good that we will watch him humiliate himself," Kohaku says, suddenly not annoyed at being awake.

“Only one of us can use the telescope at a time, though,” Kinro points out. “And what guarentee do we have that Senku will do anything worth watching?”

“That’s why we’ll be using shifts!” Gen tells him. “Each of us will stay up for an hour or two, and keep an eye on Senku with this. If he does anything entertaining, we wake up everyone else and watch.”

“It seems like a good plan,” Ruri says. “Who will be taking the first shift?”

“Not me, of course!” Gen says. 

“I’ll go first!” Suika offers.

“That might be a good idea. You’ll be able to get the most sleep that way, Suika,” Ruri says. Everyone agrees, and they work together to bring all of the village’s sleeping bags to the observatory as quietly as possible. As the others settle in for their odd sleepover, Suika sets up camp by the window, taking off her melon helmet and aiming the telescope through the lab window. With her eyes, she can see Senku clearer than the others could, and she’s a bit proud of that, but he’s not doing much worth watching. His hands seem a tad bit shakier than they are normally, but that’s it. She stays up as late as she can, but eventually, she has to admit defeat and wake up Kohaku for her shift.

“You did a good job, Suika, now get some rest,” she says, ruffling her hair. Suika snuggles into the messy pile of sleeping bags, and Kohaku assumes watch.

Through the telescope, she can see Senku’s elbow moving in and out of view of the window. She can only assume it’s because he’s working on something. He continues like this for a while, and Kohaku is beginning to think that he’s not going to do anything out of the ordinary tonight. A part of her is dissappointed, but a part of her is relieved that Senku is going to be fine.

And then his elbow stops moving.

She does a double take, checking the telescope’s lens for any smudges. She finds it clean, and when she brings it back to her eye, she sees Senku scurrying past the window.

“... Ruri. Ruri, wake up.” Ruri sits bolt upright from the sleep huddle, responding as only an older sister can.

“Kohaku? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong. Senku’s just starting to do things.”

“Is he? Should we wake the others?”

“Not yet. I can’t tell if it’s anything entertaining. Here,” Kohaku says, passing over the telescope. She steps aside, and Ruri looks out the window.

“... He’s… He’s writing on the walls.”

“What?” Kohaku snatches the telescope back, and indeed, she can now see Senku’s other elbow and a wall covered in charcoal smears. At this distance, she can’t read any of it, but she suspects it would still be illegible to her three inches from her face.

“Huh. …Do you think it’s all worthwhile stuff?”

“It’s–It’s probably… There’s probably a kernel of a good idea in there?” Ruri guesses.

“Then what’s the rest of it?”

“... Bad science.” She cringes as she says it.

“I need to lie down.”

“You do that. I can go ahead and take the next shift.”

“Thanks Ruri, you’re the best,” Kohaku says wearily as she faceplants into the pile of sleeping bags. Her disturbance only minorly shifts the positions of everyone else’s limbs.

“I know,” Ruri says before Kohaku falls asleep. She keeps vigil over Senku’s lulls and spurts of strange symbols–probably from Old World Science, or maybe that Calculus he’s mentioned once or twice. It’s tiring to watch him be so frantic, though, and she knows of at least one person who will be interested in it.

“Chrome, wake up,” she whispers, briefly abandoning the telescope to shake him awake.

“Hmm? Wha’s goin’ on?” he mumbles.

“Senku’s writing on the lab walls. It’s about time for my shift to end, anyways, and I thought you wouldn’t be as bored as everyone else.”

“Lemme see,” Chrome says as the two of them walk to the telescope. Ruri hands it to him and aims his sight towards the lab window.

“Oh! I think I recognize some of this! That’s an integral!”

“Integral? As in, something important?”

“No, an integral, stress on the first syllable instead of the second,” Chrome explains. “ It’s a part of Calculus.”

“Ah. No wonder I can’t figure it out,” Ruri says. “I can memorize stories all day and manage the village’s disputes, but I don’t think I’ll ever understand Calculus.”

“You’re the only person in the village who can do what you do, Ruri,” Chrome tells her. “I think this is what Gen called the divide between Stem majors and Humanitarian majors.” He blinks, trying to remember a final detail.

“I think he said we’re supposed to team up to fight Business majors.”

“Well, whoever these Business majors are, we’ll be a great team against them.” Ruri grins, and Chrome smiles back at her for a moment.

“Well, off to bed with me. Good luck, Chrome.”

“Thanks!” With that, Ruri steals a sleeping bag that was spilling out of the communal pile and snuggles into her own private spot.

Chrome takes to watching Senku’s notes, copying down as much as he can see and comparing it with previous notes to understand what it all is. He finally gets to put years’ worth of thin hides to good use! There’s only so much detail he can pick up, though, and eventually, the frustration gets to be too much.

“Psst! Hey, Kinro! Kinro, wake up!” Despite this, Kinro continues to snore. Chrome gives up on whispering and resorts to grabbing Kinro by the ankle and draggin him out of the pile. One of the blankets sticks to his clothes as he is dragged, leaving Ginro without any sort of cover. To solve this, Ginro’s sleeping mind directs him to roll on top of the blanket he just lost. It pins it to the floor, at last exposing Kinro to the winter chill and rousing him.

“Hng. What?” he grumbles, scrubbing at the sleep in his eyes.

“Senku’s doing Calculus. I need you to help me copy it all down,” Chrome explains as quickly as he can. The notes in his hands rustle against each other as he practically vibrates with excitement.

“...Are y’sure y’didn’t have any coffee, too?” Kinro mumbles.

“Nope!” Chrome chirps. He pushes the telescope into Kinro’s hands, somehow managing to not drop his fistfuls of hides in the process. With a groan, Kinro takes the telescope and sits by the window, looking at the scrawls Senku has left all over his labratory.

“... I don’t understand any of this. How’m I s‘posed to tell you what to write?”

“... Oh,” Chrome says, like the logistics of this arrangement had only just crossed his mind. With a sheepish grin, he offers Kinro a stick of charcoal and the last of his blank hides.

“Get me my glasses,” Kinro orders. Chrome shuffles over to the little shelf in the observatory, careful not to wake the others, and grabs Kinro’s glasses for him. Once delivered, Kinro perches the glasses on the tip of his nose, looking down through them to copy the symbols he sees and looking over the top rim to use the telescope.

“And… That’s everything I can see. Senku kinda dissappeared, I think he moved to a different wall. Sorry I can’t see more, it’s a small window.”

“No, it’s fine, this is more than enough! Thanks Kinro!” Chrome says, beaming. His smile immediately falls as he yawns. “Heh. I should probably sleep now, yeah?”

“Yeah, might as well take my shift now,” Kinro agrees. With a thumbs up, Chrome steps closer to the blanket pile and collapses into it, contorting his body between everyone else and somehow looking half-comfortable doing it.    
Kinro takes his shift seriously, hardly taking his eye away from the telescope while on duty. However, he’s only on duty for a few minutes before he decides it’s Ginro’s turn. There’s only so much time a person can spend watching a room without being able to see anything, especially with a sibling who’s readily available to take over the job.

“Ginro. Wake up.” When he’s in a hurry, Kinro goes straight to poking Ginro’s ticklish spots, but he prefers to save that trick for urget situations in case each use makes it less effective. For now, he aggressively pokes Ginro’s face until he snorts awake.

“What–!? Who–!? Oh. Right. Senku. Is it my turn?” Wordlessly, Kinro shoves the telescope into his hands, yanks back his stolen blanket, and half-burries himself in the warm pile. 

“Fine,” Ginro groans with an eye roll. He situates himself in the unofficial spy perch that has been established over the course of the night, and immediately sees the leftover Calculus on the walls. Without the background knowledge that the others had, though, his immediate assumption is that they are witchcraft-adjacent symbols. He entertains himself by imagining what they could all be for. The minutes drag on into an hour, and his little game gets progressively less fun as his imagination turns to sinister applications of those squiggles. If Senku’s chemicals can melt bodies, then why couldn’t his symbols?

So of course, when the cackling starts, it scares him out of his mind.

“Gen! Gen, wake up, you asshole, I’m not dealing with this crap anymore!” Ginro scurries over to him and starts to shake him awake, not bothering to keep his volume down for the others. While still half-asleep, Gen tries to push him away, resulting in his face being squished.

“Gen,” he whines, squishing Gen’s cheeks in retaliation. At last, Gen wakes up.

“Huh?” With impeccable timing, Senku cackles again, loud enough for the echoes to carry into the observatory.

“He’s your problem now!” Ginro declares, quickly burrowing into the center of the blanket pile, effectively surrounding himself with both comfortable warmth and strong bodies that can protect him.

“Huh.” With a stretch and a yawn, Gen pries himself out of his sleeping bag and trudges over to the window, where he perches on the windowsill and lays the telescope across his lap. Senku keeps cackling intermittently from his lab, and Gen decides that he can afford to rest his eyes for the first bit of his shift. He was never an earlier riser, though, so he easily dozes off in his seat, and stays that way until there is a new noise outside.

Gen blinks back to awareness to the sound of words, too far off to be understood, but loud enough for him to hear their rhythm. It takes only moments for him to recognize the tune.

“Alright everyone, this is it!” he chirps as he tears each and every blanket away from the pile. One by one, they wake up from the winter chill as Gen climbs down the ladder.

“Follow me if you want to see what we all came here for!” One by one, they follow him, the more reasonable of them grabbing stray coats or blankets for the cold and Ginro forgetting to entirely. Kinro grabs an extra blanket on reflex, too used to picking up his brother’s slack. Gen leads his small parade to the lab, and as they peek through the flaps of the science hut, they see Senku shuffling back and forth in a manner that the rhythmically challenged would call dancing. They catch him in the middle of a verse.

“C'mon and run, baby run. C'mon, c'mon, do it, run baby run. Yeah, you wanna hoop, so shoot, baby shoot. Yeah, it's time to hoop, so shoot, baby shoot baby.”

“What is he saying?” Suika asks in pure bewilderment. Every ounce of Gen’s willpower is currently dedicated to not making a sound, as his face is contored in a hideous grin that begs to laugh. He is unable to answer Suika’s question, and Senku continues his off-key singing.

“C'mon and slam, and welcome to the jam. C'mon and slam, if you wanna jam. C’mon and… slam…” Slowly, he trails off, surrounded by beakers and tools and smudged math, and the beginnings of horror dawn on his face as his eyes land on his audience.

“And welcome to the jam!” Gen shrieks, completing the verse as he runs off into the village, laughing all the way. The others quickly follow suit, scattering throughout the village. They trust that Gen will let them in on the joke later that day.

And Senku watches them go in stunned silence, too confused and mortified to think of chasing after them for vengeance.

* * *

Gen comes back to the lab later that morning, still just early enough for everyone else to be asleep. Senku notices him this time.

“I’m not putting on a concert for you, if that’s what you came here for.”

“No concert,” Gen says with a smile that says he will definitely bring the topic up again later. “I came here to see what you were up to this whole time. You’ve been working on a side project, haven’t you? And while we’re on a time crunch to finish the phones, too! What’s important enough to distract our  _ great chief _ ?”

“Don’t–! …Don’t say anything, alright?” Senku looks down at the floor, looking almost as embarrassed as when he got caught singing. Count Gen intrigued.

“Not a word,” he promises. With another moment of hesitation, followed by a wordless grumble, Senku reaches under the table and pulls out various pieces of equipment, assembling them along with some of the clutter already atop the table. When he pulls out a failed glass container, the bottom broken off and filed down, and a thin needle, the pieces click together in Gen’s head.

“You made a recorder!? Seriously!?”

“I told you not to say anything!” Senku snaps.

“Sorry, sorry~. But I didn’t mean it like that.” Senku raises his eyebrow, and Gen can hear the phantom of a timer ticking down the time he has to explain himself.

“I mean, we all know you’re not as cold as you pretend to be, but you’re still a very methodical and logic-driven person. It’s surprising that you’d take the time to do this now, instead of waiting for after we take care of the empire.”

“That’s–Well, it’s…” Senku grunts, frustrated over his lack of words. Gen is willing to pin the clumsy explanation on coffee brain and not tease him over it.

“That’s not how this works.”

“Oh? Enlighten me, then.”

“There’s… We’re–The whole village is focused on one goal right now. Finish the phones, take care of Tsukasa’s empire, and then what comes after is… It’s up to me. It’s my call on what the next step to rebuilding society is gonna be.” Senku’s hand creeps up towards his neck, and his gaze sneaks over to his recorder.

“In my mind, there’s not really an ‘after’ until we’ve gone all the way to space and back. And there’s never a 100% chance that things are going to go according to plan. Ruri could’ve had a viral infection. There’s a nonzero chance that there are more people out there, and that they’ll be even more hostile than the village was a first. There’s no guarantee that we’ll even win against Tsukasa, and even if we do, there’ll still be dangers we’ll have to face for the sake of progress. So… I managed to make the time for this, and the villagers deserve some fun whenever we can fit it in.”

“…Oh.” For all his expertise, Gen hadn’t expected Senku to open up like that. Coffee brain really is something else.

“Like–Like the cotton candy, right?”

“Yeah, like that. I still need to finish this up, though. I’ll show them tomorrow.” Senku goes to disassemble the recorder, and Gen notices his fingers shaking.

“Are you alright?”

“Yeah? I’m fine, why would you–” Senku looks at his own hands, and then sighs heavily. “Relax. It’s just the caffeine. I miscalculated how much two years would affect my tolerance.”

“Aha.” That’s better than some other reasons, Gen supposes, but it’s still not great. There’s still some emotional weight behind that, the weight of a world that is irreparably gone. Time to change the subject.

“So this is why you asked for extra acid? I know you already had plenty to run the phone.”

“Yeah, it is. Trust me, I wanted to avoid tipping anyone off, but this is too delicate for a combustion engine to work. I’m lucky Ginro’s still so bad at math.”

“Heh, that’s true–Wait, a combustion engine!? Like in cars!?”

“You’d be surprised how easy it is to make diesel fuel with algae and wood ash,” Senku explains with his usual smirk.

“ _ Algae _ ?” Gen is almost laughing from the absurdity of it all.

“Anything that’s got oil in it would work, but I figure we’re less likely to eat algae oil than any of our other options. Then again, algae oil  _ is _ a great brain supplement.”

“Gross, no! Keep your algae to yourself, thank you very much!” They laugh over Gen’s theatrics, and things feel comfortable again.

“How close do you think we are to cars, anyways? Walking everywhere  _ sucks _ .”

“Closer than you think, probably. Kohaku can tell you about how I came to the village in a cart–”

“There’s my entertainment for tonight!”

“–and we’ve got metal figured out already. Soon as we get the time and the supplies, I’ll get cracking on an engine. And maybe…”

“Maybe?” Gen prompts.

“The method I know takes a full day to finish, but there was a guy that figured out how to convert oil to biodiesel in  _ fifteen minutes flat. _ And it’s  _ more _ effective when the oil has  _ impurities _ ! It’s the most counterintuitive shit ever, and I swear, one day I’m gonna figure out what Norman fucking Fraley did. More diesel and glycerin than we’ll know what to do with.”

“Glycerin?” Gen asks through his laughter. It’s a rare sight to see Senku so heated over something relatively trivial. “Finally, I’ll be able to resume my skincare routine.”

“Oh please, like anyone cares what your skin looks like. That glycerin’s going straight into soap.”

“What is it with you and soap!?” Their normal bickering kicks off from there, and the day gets started on a high note.

* * *

“Senku, can I be honest about something?”

“Fine.” Gen takes a deep breath to steel himself.

“Your cola isn’t actually that great.”

“Yeah, that’s fair. It’s only really the scent that I got right.”

“But it does smell  _ exactly like cola _ .”

“Maybe we should make a scented candle.”

“Oh, yes, sceneted candles! I missed those!”

“Why would a candle need a scent?” Kohaku asks.

“‘Cause it smells nice, obviously,” Gen responds.

“How would that even work?” Chrome asks, ever curious.

“Typically, you’d extract the oils from whatever you want the candle to smell like,” Senku explains. “You’d mix in while the wax was melted, and then–”

“Wait, melted?” Kohaku interrupts.

“Well, yeah,” Gen steps in, “you’d melt the wax, and then it’d set into a candle.”

“So you’re saying that your candles… were solid?” Chrome questions.

“Yeah?” Kohaku and Chrome look at each other. They then promptly burst into laughter.

“A solid candle! Never thought I’d see the day!” Kohaku wheezes.

“And then they put stuff in it? What’re they gonna do, eat the candle?” Chrome’s comment makes them both laugh harder. 

“Wow gramps, you really have the wildest ideas,” Kohaku says as she pulls herself together.

“Wh–Gramps!?” Senku sputters. “I’m not anyone’s grandfather!”

“You were saying you were older than us just a few days ago, why get mad about it now?” Kohaku asks. Senku opens his mouth, raising a finger and taking a breath to prepare for a long explanation, but just as quickly, he puts his finger down and sighs. He turns around in defeat at the hands of his own favored weapon: Logic.

“And the all-nighter sign is still at zero. You need to take better care of yourself in your old age,” Chrome says.

“I’m telling you–!”

“Listen to your grandchildren, Senku,” Gen interrupts. “They’re only worried about you.” Senku is silent for a moment, and his eyes grow steely as he considers his next words.

“Okay, boomer.” The indignant gasp Gen makes is loud enough to disturb the whole village. 

* * *

“I thank my ancestor before me for his great wisdom.”

“Ruri, all I did was tell you where the rest of the manganese is. Did Kohaku put you up to this?” With an all-too-innocent smile and giggle, Ruri scurries away from Senku to collect the last of the manganese. It’s not long until she’s gathered it all and brought it back to the hut where she and Gen work. With the finish line in sight, they don’t talk like they usually do, instead focusing on finishing the last few hundred batteries by the end of today. Though of course, with Gen being Gen, the hut isn’t silent for long.

“Nori wa Aen, Onigiri no Mangan, Guwasumi Guwasumi, Ah-tto iu-ma ni Mangan Denchi, Ah-tto iu-ma ni Mangan Denchi.” Ruri isn’t even sure he knows he’s doing it, but it’s a catchy tune, and it’s not hard for her to pick up the lyrics.

“Kanden Mangan, Sanzan Mangan Kanden Mangan, Gan-gan Mangan, Kanden Mangan, Sanzan Mangan!” There work turns into a little party, and they quickly get past #700 of this second set. Ruri is enjoying herself.

What she doesn’t notice, though, is the device that’s been placed just inside the hut, to the side of the doorway to prevent anyone from stepping on it. Gen’s eyes catch on its slight motion as the needle spins around on the glass.

He doesn’t stop singing, and doesn’t say a word when the device disappears again.

* * *

For some untold reason, Ginro has decided that his new method of avoiding work is leading the village in chanting about the sulfuric acid fairy. In the brief moments when everyone is in harmony, the chanting could be called haunting, but it’s mostly just weird.

And as been happening around the village lately, a recorder pops up out of everyone’s sight. Senku lets it run for a while before retrieving it.

“You’ve even got religious music now,” Gen teases him.

“Shut up.” Senku shoves him, but his words barely have any bite.

* * *

“Senku! This is… This is…”

“It’s no big deal, really,” Senku tries to brush it off.

“It is a big deal,” Ruri argues. “Can you imagine, if we could record all of the stories? And what you already have is…”

“Well, it’s no Lillian Weinberg, but it’s still pretty good,” Gen butts in.

“I… Well, anyways,” Senku says over the sound of himself singing Space Jam, “The record isn’t going to last forever. Eventually, if we keep playing it, it’s going to wear out.”

“Oh,” Ginro says dejectedly.

“Which is why I’ve made multiple copies,” Senku continues. “Specifically, sixty nine of them.”

And like a Greek chorus, the entire village, gathered around the science hut, cries out, “Nice!” 


End file.
